Working for something new, a left which reflects reality, which is democratic yet authentic "You're a disease"--reporter for ABC news New Jersey. Socialist. 2nd Series

Friday, July 30, 2004

Bourgeois and the proletarians....

Thoughts on rereading that section of the Communist Manifesto.

It appears to me that the downfall of bourgeois society is due to the fact that the industrial bourgeoisie has within it two contradictory seeds, or components.

From what I gather the manufacturing bourgeoisie came about when merchants took it upon themselves to sponsor shops and manufacturing concerns, the products of which they then appropriated and sold.

Previously the bourgeoisie had just been concerned with buying, selling, and participating in local government, as well, I suppose, if you want to extend the term to its proper French sense, supplying the beurocracy of the State.

It made its error in thinking that it could master industrial processes while still asserting its commercial values on society. Thinking that there was no contradiction between running a factory and promoting puritan family values developed by a consceientious merchant class.

There is a profound difference between the thrift and general penny pinching mercantile social philosophy on the one hand and the values and realities which come out of industrial society in general and out of the manufacturing and production sectors of society in particular.

The bourgeoisie and bourgeois culture is doomed to fail because it doesn't reflect the actual realities of the lives of workers.

No one believes those soporifics when they've lived in a plant town.
What exactly does Adam Smith and trade have to do with real life and work, except that Smith was one of the first hypocrites to propose that the bourgeois could dominate industry while still being bourgeois?

The focus on this illusory body of people called the Proletariat is misguided, in my opinion. There are people who are engaged in production centered work and those engaged in distribution centered work, and those engaged in production centered work, whether they're factory workers, plumbers, or cooks, greatly outnumber those who make their living through distribution and trade.

It's the philosophy and values of those who work in the productive processes of society which is destined to triumph, because it is the majority.